The origin of the term Endianness

So most of us programming people know about Endianness. We know that Intel microprocessors are little-endian while Motorola microprocessors are big-endian. Most of the Internet protocols as well as most of audio/video binary formats also follow big-endian style. Yet I wonder if many of us do know about the origin (etymology) of the these terms. I for myself didn't know about this before today. And I found it to be quite funny.

According to Wikipedia The term big-endian originally comes from Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels by way of Danny Cohen in 1980^[2]. In 1726, Swift described tensions in Lilliput and Blefuscu: whereas royal edict in Lilliput requires cracking open one's soft-boiled egg at the small end, inhabitants of the rival kingdom of Blefuscu crack theirs at the big end (giving them the moniker Big-endians).^[6] The terms little-endian and endianness have a similar intent.^[7]

"On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace"^[2] by Danny Cohen ends with: "Swift's point is that the difference between breaking the egg at the little-end and breaking it at the big-end is trivial. Therefore, he suggests, that everyone does it in his own preferred way. We agree that the difference between sending eggs with the little- or the big-end first is trivial, but we insist that everyone must do it in the same way, to avoid anarchy. Since the difference is trivial we may choose either way, but a decision must be made."

I first read about this story in Memory Management Programming Guide for Core Foundation. Hope you find this story interesting.